Moment of the Week – September 29th 2011
When the world went blurry
Scott and I have been playing pickup soccer games weekly all summer in the evening.
There is a playground right next to the field where Mackenzie runs around with her friends. Caitlyn sits in the stroller and takes in the action and Scott and I get our game on.
On this night, approximately 30 seconds into the game, Scott collided with a friend of ours and the soccer ball popped up and caught him in the eye.
He waved away any help and wandered off to recover, but I kept my eye on him because he looked really worried.
I finally just stopped playing and tracked him down, and he confessed that his vision in his left eye was completely cloudy and there was an area (about 1/4) of his vision that was gone.
“Wait, you mean like Gone gone??”
(Hey, I’m not a doctor.)
“Yes, as in we probably need to go to the emergency room.”
The Aftermath
We ended up heading home (Scott ran the mile home to get in some modicum of exercise since he didn’t get to play soccer), and he received a priesthood blessing that stated he would fully recover his vision and he would be guided in terms of when to seek medical help.
After talking to a few friends (an ophthalmology resident and an optometry student) and getting his eye examined in our living room, he decided to wait and see.
The blurriness started to subside but the area of vision loss remained, though it was compensated by his other eye almost entirely so it didn’t cause him difficulty in day to day things.
Detached retina?
About 36 hours later, he asked his ophthalmologist friend to have a look and he called me to say his retina was likely torn and he needed to see a specialist immediately and would likely have surgery that day.
—– Here is where Anne panics. ——
The specialist determined that he in fact had a detached vitreous and a torn retina.
If you are me and you are busy panicking, this doesn’t sound like good news. However, it meant no surgery and his vision should come back fully on its own over time (weeks or months).
It also means he wears goggles for any sports involving a ball. I should point out here that Scott looks hot in goggles, so really this was a best-case scenario: no surgery, and snazzy sports accessories.
Scary! Glad everything is ok.
But, um, where is the photo of Scott in the snazzy goggles?
whew! when i read “detached” and “retina” i went “oh no!” because for us Marfs that is Bad News. but then i re-read it and it’s not the retina that is actually detached, right? hence why it’s not surgical? hope recovery goes quickly for him and yay for no surgery!